Epik8, a business passionate about using data and technology to help businesses grow, uses Cognism’s B2B data to:
- Reduce lead list turnaround time from 7 days to 45 minutes
- Increase availability of emails by 26% and mobile numbers by 54%
- Decrease bounce rates from 15% to 9%
- Improve overall staff efficiencies and data confidence
- Smoothly integrate with HubSpot
Teams using: Operations
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The company
Epik8 specialises in supporting start-up and scale-up technology companies looking to launch into the UK and Ireland with business development, sales and marketing. Epik8’s sales team helps these companies find new customers and develop opportunities in new markets.
They partner and become an extension of their clients’ own teams by priding themselves on being trusted advisors to their customers. Epik8 has a highly qualified network of contacts and a proven track record, enabling them to match new products and services with prospects quickly, building repeatable sales funnels in the process.
The challenge
We interviewed Laura Hayward, Head of Internal CRM and Data at Epik8 about her experience with Cognism.
What lead generation providers did Epik8 formerly use?
“We used to buy leads from third-party companies who’d extract data lists on our behalf. The data was often non-GDPR compliant. This, coupled with a seven day list turnaround time, created frustration amongst the sales teams.”
“We also used Lusha to acquire contact details, but the poor data quality led to a lack of productivity and fewer results. As a result, the SDRs were often guessing emails, frequently getting blocked and being marked as spam. The SDRs also spent much of their time ringing HQ numbers trying to get past gatekeepers.”
What was the main turning point for exploring UK B2B data providers?
“High bounce rates were a big problem. Not only did these create discouragement amongst the sales team but our email domain also suffered.”
“We discovered Cognism from a word-of-mouth referral. In order to benchmark our decision fairly, we compared Cognism against Lusha and ZoomInfo.”
What evaluation methods were conducted to help with the selection?
“We extracted a data sample from our Hubspot CRM and compared the results between each provider.”
“Cognism yielded 26% more emails and 54% more mobiles than ZoomInfo and Lusha. Cognism also provided four types of phone data: mobile, office, HQ and direct dials whereas the other two databases didn’t. The high coverage of mobiles gives the SDRs the opportunity to spend more time getting through to decision-makers and less time guessing HQ numbers.”
“Overall, we chose Cognism for its fair price point, reliable sales data and seamless integration with Hubspot and its LinkedIn Sales Navigator Extension.”
The solution
Epik8’s operations department manages and controls the Cognism process for sales to then take action.
What Cognism products do the SDR team use to maximise prospecting efficiencies?
“We have around 15 SDRs handling multiple clients. The sales teams use a combination of calling and emailing and use Cognism’s highly innovative phone-verified Diamond Data feature to call the mobiles of people that genuinely exist. They trust the data.”
What are the daily workflows like for the operations department?
“The SDRs create lead lists within LinkedIn Sales Navigator. These lists are then exported into the Cognism Web App by the operations team to filter, cleanse and import to Hubspot using the direct integration.”
“The Cognism platform provides comprehensive industry, funding, technographic and geographic information. Here’s an example: some customers only want to approach businesses that have a specific technology in their tech stack. Before Cognism, we didn’t have the tools to provide this level of insight. The clients are happier as we can have a more tailored approach to our targeting.”
Laura explained the time saved since using Cognism.
“I can now create and produce a list within 45 minutes. Our list building time has reduced by 99%. It’s a massive game-changer for us.”
“Sales can now request more data with less resources. As a result of this immense time saving, we’ve now reduced the size of our operations team, therefore having significant cost savings to the business. Additionally, we can also give quick feedback to the sales team about the quality of the ICP so they can make any changes if required.”
The results
We asked Laura what success Epik8 has seen since using Cognism.
“We don’t have exact metrics to track the call to conversion rate. However, I know the conversion rates have amplified as a result of the accuracy of Cognism’s mobiles. This has not only yielded more return on investment but also given the sales team more confidence when calling a prospect.”
How has Cognism’s data accuracy benefited Epik8?
“Our email bounce rates have reduced from 15% to 9% which is far lower than the industry standard.”
“We can see the immediate benefits as the email open, click and reply rates have increased leading to more meetings booked for the clients. As a business, we have high expectations now as we’ve gone from having inadequate data to world-class data.”
“As an operations department, having Cognism’s highly accurate data in our CRM has totally transformed the way we work.”
Try Cognism’s sales intelligence solution
Over 1,000 revenue teams around the world trust Cognism to:
✅ Build qualified B2B contact databases
✅ Plan and launch their outbound campaigns
✅ Power up their social selling
✅ Meet and beat their revenue targets
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